The Language of the Street

Posters&#8212billboards, advertisements, impromptu signs&#8212are the wallpaper of life in a city. Nowadays, many are dominated by photographs. Newly bunion-less feet emerge in harrowing detail from the windows of subway trains and monolithic, gap-toothed waifs smile down like small gods from building-tops on West 4th Street. It’s a pleasure, then, to open the forthcoming “Hervé Morvan: The Genius of French Poster Art,” a collection of work by the artist, who died in 1980.

In his lifetime, Morvan created more than five hundred posters&#8212humorously simple, cheerfully colorful prints advertising nightclubs, cigarettes, pasta, Perrier. He made movie posters for the likes of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “The Grand Illusion,” “Gigi,” and “The Bicycle Thief.” The slim and often awkwardly translated volume labels Morvan’s posters as the “the language of the street,” and calls the street itself “an ephemeral museum”&#8212if so, this is one museum whose bright, whimsical halls I’d like to wander through.